Photo by Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post WEST PALM BEACH; 11/25/00:
Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore shows signs of fatigue Saturday
as the Palm Beach County election canvassing board continued to examine
questionable ballots in the county Emergency Operations Center, where
the hand count of all Palm Beach County ballots took place.

Election 2000:
The Palm Beach Post SagaBy Sammy R. Alzofon

The Palm Beach Post plans for elections well in advance and plans
well. This year our newsroom staff went into overdrive after the 2000
presidential election and also managed to cover non-election news. Our
newsroom is still covering many aspects of that election and our CAR editor
is wringing her hands because the election is bumping much-needed decennial
census results planning, which we coordinate with other Cox newspapers.

Pre-Election

The Editorial Library begins election work well before the primaries.
The paper has an election coverage document that details everyone’s responsibilities.
This document includes what each reporter needs to request from the Editorial
Library for background checks for each of their candidates. We research
every single candidate for office. A permanent candidate list is maintained
on our intranet with addresses and dates of birth, compiled and edited
from election to election.

We had primaries, runoffs and general elections in 2000. By election
night the work moves to the CAR editor. We get to eat the pizza and pick
up any loose ends.

Election Day

The first sign of things to come is at our 11:15 a.m. news meeting on
election day when editors compared notes on the many callers who said
they may have voted for Pat Buchanan. The first complaints regarding the
butterfly ballot had already been coming to our Opinion people and the
Metro desk.

What does our budget look like for the first week or so? Here’s the only
election-related request on election day:

Bruce Lind wants to
know the election results for Pat Buchanan in the '92 and '96 elections.

Week One

On the 8th we start getting curious:

Can I get an age and
salary for pbc supervisor of elections Theresa LePore???

Need the name of an
expert on Florida election law; also telephone for Buchanan national
headquarters

Looking for the section
of the Florida code that identifies the remedy, or remedies, a judge
can assign or make for ballot irregularities, specifically for the problem
of over votes. Marc says the judge can apply a statistical analysis
in the case of ballot irregularity. I asked Marc if the section could
be in the Florida Administrative code, and he said possibly, it could
be.

Can you get us corporate
info, phone numbers, any major news stories on this company: Sequoia
Pacific Systems, 1030 N. Anderson Road, Exeter, Calif. 93221. They supposedly
made/printed the ballot. Please relay answers to all of people above.
Thanks.

List of county names,
alpha, along with phone numbers for all supervisors of elections.

I am writing a follow
to Mark Foley's claims that Buchanan may have gotten all those votes
legitimately. Foley says Buchanan has had good showings in the Republican
party before and that Palm Beach County actually has a strong core of
reform minded conservatives. I need to find out how many votes Buchanan
got in the Republican primary in 1992 and 1996 in Palm Beach County
compared to the other republican candidates and third party candidates.

Thank you Newslib - we get a copy of this late Friday night, Nov. 10th,
from a Newslib subscriber:

Ref: there was an article
in the New Yorker within the last few years concerning the problems
with punch voting cards...can you locate that and let me know. this
might help with a daily story we're working on another request, more
long range: A man named Anderson ran for a PBC office (i think tax collector)
in 1984 (early 80s at least). He said there were a bunch of stories
in The New York Times that were highly critical of the then-brand new
punch card voting system in PBC. thanks.

By Saturday, the 11th:

Dear ref: can you locate
this court case, with the case summary and decision. it's a 1998 Florida
case titled Gus Beckstrom v. Volusia County Canvassing Board and Robert
Del Vogel. the only citation I have is 23 Florida Law Weekly S149B.
thanks.

Week Two

Reporters and copy editors, focusing on a single precinct, 194D, begin
calling all 2,042 registered voters. Many Buchanan votes come from this
precinct. Many of the voters are elderly Jews who did not intend to vote
for Pat Buchanan (whose views on Adolph Hitler are not popular in the
Jewish community). The library pitched in with telephone number assistance.
More than half of these people are contacted within a two day period.
The story runs on November 12.

December

It’s December now:

Not for tomorrow, but
for the reprint, I'd like to get the list of numbers showing how Bush's
lead changed over the days, from Nov. 8 through his winning total (if,
indeed, he wins)

Can you check the docket
on this case. joel says there is a hearing in today. Miami * Minority
voters: The Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network filed a lawsuit
last week claiming Harris' certification disenfranchised minority voters.

Our ability to access all the information we needed, mostly on flat rate
accounts, was indispensable. Best flat rate sources? Lexis-Nexis, Newslibrary,
flatrateinfo.com, quickinfo.net and, of course, the wonderful Florida
public records sites at both the state and county level, accessible in
large part due to the Florida Sunshine Law.

Our reporters scattered across the state and the country. Since we staff
the library seven days a week until 10 p.m. (with the exception of Saturday,
when we’re here until 8:00 p.m), we were accessible. How did we get the
information out? We’re very fortunate to have multiple ways of delivering
what is needed: We have our text archive available on our intranet as
well as on a public web site. Reporters can access the intranet via a
secure ID. They can then pick up research files on a library FTP site.
We also have an excellent e-mail system that allowed us to move files
anywhere, anytime.

Research questions were both simple and complex. I can’t say how many
we handled because we don’t keep numbers. One of the most difficult tasks
was keeping a daily count on over-votes, under-votes and total votes for
each candidate. Another incredibly time-consuming task was gathering biographical
information on the innumerable, heretofore obscure, judges that played
such an important role in this tale. And it wasn’t just the breaking news.
Many issues, old and new, converged: reliability of voting equipment,
equal access to the polls, standards for conducting an election, and partisan
interference in the election process. We looked at the role of election
supervisors in Florida and tried to identify people brought in to Florida
to disrupt recounts.

And the library staff: what excellent work! Our researchers sat on the
front line. We have two full-time researchers, one part-time researcher,
and me. I can float from part-time to overtime, whenever needed. PostFacts
(our fee-based service to the public staffed by a full-time person) handled
many incoming calls from the public and the tabloid media. And I can’t
forget our photo and text archiving staff. They were deluged with graphic,
tabular and photographic files. The memorable one for me is the December
1st listing of every single voting precinct, with the votes for Gore and
Bush and the respective under-votes and over-votes. This became 16 individual
files in our text archive!

I feel, more so than ever, that our relationship with the newsroom contributed
to a research effort that was, as one of our researchers said, "Just
another day." The work flowed as smoothly as could be expected, and
we also fielded many, many questions from other news libraries. I feel
like Theresa LePore looks. A long-awaited Thanksgiving vacation vaporized
(could any of you have stayed home anyway?). I wouldn’t have missed the
experience for the world and it is still happening. The Palm Beach
Post has many more stories to write and publish about the 2000 presidential
election.

Sammy R. Alzofon is Library Director and News Researcher at The Palm
Beach Post. You can contact her at salzofon@pbpost.com.